“I’ve never cheated on you,” I continued. “Not once. Hell, you know my every fucking move. You know where I am, who I’m with, what I’m doing damn near every minute of the day.”
She stood there frozen, tears building in her eyes. I was so mentally exhausted with the shit that I could cry too, but I was too pissed to cry.
“I admit it over and over that I work too much. I know that,” I said. “But this is the life you wanted. This is the stability you wanted. This is the man you married.”
My chest rose and fell hard. “I can’t keep walking into this fucking house every day to something. I work my ass off all day. All fucking day. And then I come home and it’s like I gotta clock back in and work even harder on my fucking marriage.”
The second the words left my mouth, I knew they came out wrong. I saw it on her face immediately. Her expression of anger and rage went straight to deep hurt.
“Khloe—” I stepped toward her instinctively, reaching out. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, backing away from my touch. “Don’t touch me. This will be our last time discussing this topic.
She turned and walked out of the bathroom, leaving me standing there with my hands still half-raised.
After cooling off in the bathroom for a while, I finally splashed cold water on my face and took a deep breath. My chest still felt tight, but I wasn’t mad anymore. I was just tired. Tired of arguing. Tired of trying. Tired of not knowing if I was doing enough, or doing too much of the wrong thing.
I cut the light off and headed into the bedroom, expecting it to be empty. Khloe had this thing where she’d grab her pillow and storm off to one of the guest rooms when shit got didn’t go her way and we’d go back and forth for a while. She called it “protecting her peace,” but really, it was just her way of icing me out. But when I walked in, she was still in our bed.
I walked over and leaned down to press a kiss to the side of her head. She didn’t move or even breathe any deeper to let me know she felt it.
Nothing.
That was a different kind of pain. That was the part they don’t tell you about in vows — how silence could feel louder than any scream.
I climbed into bed on my side and stared up at the ceiling, praying for sleep to catch me quick.
My body was still, but my mind wasn’t.
Khloe could argue all night. We could talk, scream, throw low blows and somehow still find our way back by morning. That was our toxic ass pattern. But her silence was something else. She didn’t just check out of the argument. She checked out on me.
And that silence was the real punishment.
My thoughts started racing. I told myself she wouldn’t do anything. I knew my wife. She wasn’t gonna actually use that damn hall pass. I only said it to prove a point and to show her how ridiculous she sounded.
But what if…?
What if I pushed her too far this time? What if all those moments where she begged me to be present, to slow down, and to see her — what if that was her breaking point?
Maybe I’d broken something that couldn’t be fixed with kisses and time.
I rolled to my side, watching the curve of her shoulder in the dark. Wanting so badly to reach for her, but scared that she’ll reject it.
It wasn’t just about sex. Or Greece. Or another argument we’d forget by next week.
It was a shift.
7
Khloe
It had been almost three months since Kairo said that dumb shit about a hall pass.
And in those three months, I hadn’t said a word about it. Not once.
That night, after the silence in our bed and I realized how easy it was for him to fall asleep while I lay there wide awake, I made a decision. I was tired of explaining the same shit to him, so I told myself I was going to find happiness within me.
I poured myself into work at my dad’s firm more than I had in years. Took on clients I didn’t have to. Stayed late when I didn’t need to and not because I suddenly loved the grind, but because it gave me something that felt like it belonged to me. And I poured the rest of myself into Kennedi.
